An aircraft capable of Mach 4+? Sure, I suppose. Seems an odd thing to develop these days. Those sort of speed were an aviation fetish in the 50’s and 60’s, but there really isn’t a whole lot of need to go that fast and the penalties for doing so are *harsh.*

Operating in space? Meh. Might be a translation error or a simple misunderstanding. An aircraft capable of going that fast could potentially pop above the sensible atmosphere, perhaps like the X-15. So it would be in space, but nowhere near orbit (which would require Mach 25, not merely Mach 4). if it did so, it would need to have some ability to control its attitude, presumably with attitude control thrusters.

The B61-12 is called “dangerous” because it’s yield is *ridiculously* low, variable between 300 *tons* and fifty kilotons. How it’s a “super nuke” I can’t say.

Entertainingly, in an effort to define this bomb as “dangerous,” the author of the piece refers to both International ANSWER (a communist front group) and Russia Today (Putins mouthpiece in the west). these organizatiosn don;t want the US to have this or any other new nukes. Which means it’s probably a good idea to keep developing, testing and fielding new nukes.

The official story is that Russia is in Syria in order to fight ISIS and other jihadis… *not* that they’re there in order to get them selves a strategic foothold in the region by way of supporting Assad so he’ll give ’em a port. But then there’s this:

Some might suggest that this is irony,or turnabout s fair play. The US armed the proto-Taliban against the Soviets, after all. But in the 80’s, the great threat was the Soviet Union, not global jihadi terrorism. Now that the Russian government claims that jihadis are enough of a threat that they’re willing to carpet bomb cities full of civilians, they are *apparently* arming the very same jihadis.

In short, in June 2016 Don Trump Jr. was informed via email of a meeting with Russian lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Clinton… dirt dug up by the Russian government for the purpose of aiding Trump. Don Jr. expressed enthusiasm for this.

On the one hand, this is not good news for the Trump narrative that he and his campaign had nothing to do with the Russians. On the other hand, it doesn’t really seem to back up the anti-Trump narrative that his campaign colluded with the Russians. It seems like the Russians – assuming the lawyer knew what she was talking about – had found the incriminating evidence on Clinton on their own initiative, and were simply offering it to the Trump campaign.

Now, on the one hand if someone offers you information that would be very useful or valuable to you, it seems reasonable enough to at least hear them out. On the other hand, there are laws against political campaigns accepting valuable gifts from foreign nationals, and “opposition research” can be considered monetarily valuable. Thus a violation of campaign finance laws. And on the other hand, we have hysterical Democrats like Tim Kaine crying “treason.” The problem with *that* is that treason is clearly defined in the US Federal Code:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason…

… and Don Jr.’s actions don’t come close to “treason.” In 2016,Russia was not an enemy of the US, so that wipes it out right there. And accepting information from even an enemy does not constitute giving them aid and comfort.

On the whole this is bad news for Trump. And potentially good news for future-President Pence.

And on the subject of Russia… if you still have a LiveJournal account, it’s time to close it out. LJ was sold to the Russians years ago and in December the servers moved to Russia; you are now subject to Russias laws regarding censorship and control over the internet. You are not allowed to post political discussions without first getting LJ’s approval (i.e. the Russian government), and if you have more than 3,000 views per day you’re supposed to register as a media outlet.

I can well remember the justifiable fear that the Soviets were going to nuke the US into oblivion. That fear of course went away when the USSR went the way of the dodo (well, went the way of genocidal ideologically evil dodos), but the last 8 years of feckless “leadership” coupled with a couple decades of brainless idiocy regarding the US nuclear deterrent program have led to a situation where it’s becoming increasingly likely that people will have to start seriously contemplating nuclear Armageddon again. Not only do we have leaders with poor impulse control in the US and North Korea casually threatening to nuke the bejeebers out of each other, there’s KGB-trained psychopath in charge of Russia casually steamrolling his neighbors and carpet bombing civilians for giggles. Evenwhat passes for the medis are starting to take notice of the effect, if not necessarily the full set of causes:

This article gives some advice on the sort of building to hunker down in to provide some measure of protection against fallout. Oddly, the most obvious and important piece of advice about surviving a nuclear attack – “don’t live in a major metropolitan area” – was not provided. The data for the article was horked from a scholarly article from 2014:

Which is available for download as a PDF. It provides some complex math to determine when you should shelter in place, and when you should run like hell… math that the average schmoe is unlikely to do in the aftermath of a nuclear blast, but, still, potentially useful if converted into some sort of chart (perhaps one of those plastic-disk “computers” like the old nuclear bomb effect computers).

For years after the Evil Empire went kaput, the old civil defense efforts of telling people how to survive nuclear attacks – efforts that ranged from the generally ineffective to the outright laughable oftentimes – vanished. But they seem to be coming back… probably as ineffective as ever.

So… as long as I’m on the topic, anybody know of a good, reliable and *affordable* geiger counter or other form of radiation detector? I’ve always kinda wanted one. While it would of course be useful in the event of a nuclear attack to scan for fallout, I always thought such a thing might be nice to have in junk and antique stores as well as while hiking. Plus, there’s that well with the indescribable color coming out of it…

“By Dawn’s Early Light” was a made-for-HBO movie filmed and set just before the fall of the Soviet Union. In short, some PO’ed Soviet military jerks steal a Russian nuclear missile, sneak it into Turkey and launch it into Ukraine, sparking a limited nuclear war between Russia and NATO. Due to misunderstandings, mistakes, arrogance and bad leadership, a situation that’s already bad gets worse. While some of the effects are clearly dated, it remains an effectively creepy movie.

One scene that always freaks me right the hell out: the carrier (USS Midway) getting torpedoed and sinking. You don’t see it; it’s just radio messages. This shows an effective example of “less is more.” As there’s no chance that an HBO TV movie budget in 1990 would have been able to show the sinking of an aircraft carrier well, doing it off screen was the right choice.

Cities get nuked. Airplanes brought down. Presidents blinded. There is no happy ending. But at least James Earl Jones gets a real cigarette.

Of course this is terribly preliminary and *not* sourced; the CIA as an organization hasn’t made the claim, just a subset of analysts. But who knows.

Best as I can figure, the reasoning behind the conclusion seems to be that Russian hackers managed to hack both the Democrat and the Republican email systems, but only released info damaging to the Democrats. Unless the Republicans didn’t actually have any juicy scandalous stuff in *their* emails (and, honestly, what are the chances of *that*), then, if true, it does point strongly towards an anti-Dem motivation.

But even if this is all true, it’s not really tampering with the voting itself, but rather a form of pro-Trump (or at least anti-Hillary) propaganda. People still voted how they voted, and the votes were still counted (or not) based on the built-in American systems. But if the Russian government can be proven to have actually done dirty tricks to aid Trump, that will not aid his first four years to go well.

And that, I think, is a better explanation than “Putin likes Trump,” or “Trump is Putins puppet.” Rather, the goal here was to actually get caught successfully tampering with the election. This would help to screw up the image of American democracy not only here but around the world, and for years to come

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]